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Ramzi Helewa (SUPPLIED PHOTOS)

Despite a big back catalogue — 10 albums, in fact — The Ramzi Helewa Sound Experiment is but a blip on the Winnipeg music radar.
   
The reason? Ramzi Helewa rarely plays live, content with being a recording artist.
   
"The last show I played was three years ago at the Times Change(d)," says Helewa, 27. "Prior to that I used to play a few coffee shops here and there, but I see myself more as a recording artist than a performer. I don’t know if I’m self-conscious or what. It takes a lot of time and, being just one person, it’s hard to go up there and present something that’s more of an orchestration."
   
Yes, The Ramzi Helewa Sound Experiment is exactly what the name suggests. Take its latest CD, Borrowed Time. Released earlier this year, the album was written, performed, recorded, mixed and mastered exclusively by Helewa. The indie-pop music-maker became interested in self-recording and production after the breakup of his high-school rock band, Steak.
   
"After awhile of being in bands, there was a lot of headache with people wanting to do different things," Helewa says. "In the end, I just liked recording and production and listening to albums and wondering how they did that; to dissect a song and figure out how they went about making it is something that interested me. Like, if you listen to The Beatles records, they did that with four tracks.
   
"Then I started listening to a lot of different kinds of music, indie rock and indie folk, a lot of Elliott Smith and Joel Plaskett and bands like that. Elliott Smith recorded most of his songs by himself, the drums, the guitar, the keyboards, the vocal harmonies. The fact that one guy is doing all that is pretty impressive."
   
Listening to the brilliant, catchy yet quirky Borrowed Time or past investigational efforts such as 2007’s Disjointed Songs and 2005’s Love in a Beautiful Way, one gets the impression that Helewa is this mad musical scientist conducting crazy classified sound experiments in a secret cellar somewhere. In fact, Helewa is quite on the level. Born in Regina and raised in Winnipeg, he’s a medical-school graduate currently doing his residency in general surgery at the University of Manitoba.
   
"I do music for fun," Helewa says. "It’s an outlet for me. I mean, I would never give up what I do as a day job because it’s something I’ve worked so hard for but, as far as the music goes, it’s always been an outlet for stress relief.
   
"I see this more as personal satisfaction and finishing something you started," he adds. "It’s just a treat if other people get to listen to it and if they enjoy it."
   
Find The Ramzi Helewa Sound Experiment online at www.ramzihelewa.com, on Facebook and MySpace, and on iTunes.
   
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